


The Lonely God and his Daughter

by Rambling_Museums



Series: Doctor Who oneshots [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anthro, Bad Anthropology skills, Chen-7, Gen, I'm a historian, Not an anthropologist, Post-Episode: s04e06 The Doctor's Daughter, Religion, Research, University Life, grad school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rambling_Museums/pseuds/Rambling_Museums
Summary: River is on a study visit to Messaline in 6022, New Byzantine Calendar. They have an interesting religion there.Now a 2 shot
Relationships: River Song & The Doctor
Series: Doctor Who oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626529
Comments: 11
Kudos: 49





	1. The Myths of Messaline

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick story with no real editing or what have you. Hope you like it, point out any mistakes you see and I'll try and fix them.

Visitors to Messaline often remarked on their strange theology. It wasn’t the expected clash or blend of Human and Hath religions as you saw on other mixed race colonies instead it was something all together alien. There was a creation myth to be sure, but that was superseeded by the Lonely God and His Daughter. The anthropologists from Lunar University’s Religious Studies department worked hard to catalogue the various faiths they came across and Messaline was no different in that respect. They sent out grad students on study trips – Messaline was safe enough for that. There hadn’t been a recorded conflict since 6012. 

The colony at Messaline grew up quickly with the help of a series of Progenation machines so even though only ten years had passed since landfall and terraforming they had two major cities and a series of smaller towns and villages. Farming wasn’t too successful yet as the radiation scrubbers still needed time to work their magic but the clever use of greenhouses and imported soil mean the colony was nearly self  sufficient already. 

Melody wasn’t quite used to being called River yet, even though she had gone by that name for six years already. She signed up for this study trip even though it was outside her official field of research because she believed it was part of her unofficial one – the history of the Doctor. She wasn’t entirely certain though; just because some people call the Doctor the Lonely God didn’t mean he was every god with that name. And she had never heard of his daughter before Messaline.

* * *

“In the beginning,” The Black Priest of the Lonely God began, “There was desolation and darkness. The first generations lived below ground.” River made a note that none of the priests were men at first glance though some of the personnel were men. “Something went wrong in the first generations. There was fighting – human against our hath brethren. We still find those lost among the tunnels of the old city once in a while.” 

“Do you know why there was fighting?” River asked.

“No, that is lost to us.” Progenation machines were very odd. River knew the priest could not be more than 10 years old – and was probably quite a bit younger than that! But she looked old. Looked far older than River who was in fact, her elder, “Some say it was a disagreement about the Sigh of the Daughter, some say it was decent sewed by the evil Cobb. All agree that whatever it was, we would not do it again.” She shrugged and settled more comfortably into the temple’s cushioned chair. 

“We fought for many generations, humans against hath against humans. It became law among humans that all must be processed by the Machine to create more fodder for the war. We could not see that this made the war endless. 

“Generation after generation fought for six days.” River blinked in surprise before realizing that with a progenation machine it was possible to create new generations multiple times a day.

“What happened on the sixth day that changed it?” River prodded, she wasn’t the only student asking these same questions – she could just see the back of an Alpha Centauran student questioning the ehad hath priest – but, anthropologically, it was good to get the complete story from a number of different sources.

“On the evening of the sixth day a small patrol led by Cline found three unprocessed beings in the west bunker tunnel. They were the Lonely God, the Black Priest, and the Red Priest.” The priest settled into her story again, “Cline the First we call him. He was the first to meet the Lonely God and his Daughter, the first to defect from the war, and the first to see the sigh – he and Gazebo that is, Gazebo is a hath elder. 

“Cline was a good soldier for Cobb at the time and saw that they were unprocessed. He did his duty and processed the man first. The first words out of the Daughter’s mouth were ‘Hello, dad.”. Do you know why this is unusual?” she raised an eyebrow at River who shook her head, “Children of the machine do not speak until they understand what they are saying. Some take ten minutes, some an hour, some still longer. The Daughter stepped out of the machine speaking. It is a mark of great intelligence and quick wit, two traits the Lonely God holds dear.

“Cline and his men did not understand the significance of what they witnessed believing as they did that the Sigh was already trapped in the Daughter’s Temple. Instead they moved to process his priests as they had him when the hath attacked. 

“There was a road block and the Lonely God was blocked off from one of his priests – the Black Priest was lost, dead or captured by the hath.” River made a sympathetic sound in the back of her throat. It took her ages to perfect the sounds that humans make after her first life in America. Now, after more than sixty years alive, she could fake all the emotions she needed to. 

“By that time, Cline grew suspicious of the Lonely God, his Daughter, and the Red Priest. Out of all of them, only the Daughter showed any appetite for war and slightly less than she should as a child of the machine. Those early machines were designed to produce warriors with tactics and weapons training built in.” The priest tapped her head, “He took them to Cobb who commanded the humans.

“Meanwhile the Black Priest was not lost, she was with the hath and was helping their injured. The Black Priest was a doctor and commanded that we work to heal instead of harm.” 

“What was the Red Priest?” River asked.

“The Red Priest called herself a Temp and was good with numbers, she inspires excellence in maths and non-combat strategy.” River frowned, she was still trying to figure out if this was just another example of the Doctor being mistaken for a god but she had never heard of a combination of companions like the Red and Black priests. 

“Cobb did not lock up the Lonely God right away. Instead he attempted to interrogate him, seeking his motives and weaknesses but he was only human and too narrow minded to discover the truth. Instead he believed the God and priest were from previous generations and had deserted the war. 

“Through his divinity the Lonely God revealed the hidden path to his Daughter’s temple to Cobb and his men. Cobb believed this meant the war was as good as won because the hath didn’t know the route. He was wrong. The Lonely God came to Messaline to teach his creation a lesson – a lesson of peace for human and hath together. To do so human and hath both had to be present so he also revealed the map through the Black priest to the hath.”

“Oh, I think I smell a confrontation coming up.” 

“Yes, but slow down. The story will be told.” The priest smiled at River as she would a child, River tried not to bristle like a porcupine. “Cobb did not trust the Lonely God or his people so commanded Cline to lock them in a cell and guard them. Cline the First, however, had been listening to the Lonely God’s words and had begun his journey to pacifism. He was on the first step that all children of the Machine had to take creating a path for his human and hath brethren. 

“The first step is not very far. So he locked up the god, the daughter, and the priest. Locked them up and stood guard. But the voice of the Lonely God drew him in and Cline listened to his sermon.”

“The Lonely God denied his Daughter. He denied her six times, one for each day of the war. He denied first that she was more than an echo of himself, second that she was a god in her own right; he denied that a child of his would be a soldier though she said he was one too; third he denied that his child would carry a weapon; forth that his daughter could save the early Messalines with her machine programming; fifth that she could continue his work among the stars.”

“What was the sixth denial?” River asked after the Black Priest was silent for a moment.

“The Red Priest took something from the Lonely God that Cline did not recognize. With it she forced the Lonely God to listen to his Daughter’s chest and proved her divinity to her father. “Prove to me that you are worthy to travel with me,” he commanded, denying her the rights of her birth.” River hummed.

“All this while the Black Priest and her hath acolyte, Peck, made their way to the temple along the black earth. The Black Priest is the only one to walk upon the desolated surface of Messaline and survive. The Lonely God protected her path, but not that of her acolyte. In the temple, the Black Priest rejoined the others and revealed the first Sigh to the humans and hath that followed them.”

“The first sigh?” River probed.

“This was the myth that Cobb and the earlier generations believed. It was false, the First Sigh that they believed in was terraforming chemicals suspended in a dense chamber. They called it the Source and believed that it was the sigh of a goddess who created the universe. These chemicals are what allow us now to walk on the earth like the Black Priest did.

“We know now that the Sigh came, not from Cobb’s goddess’s Source but from the Lonely God’s Daughter.” The priest shifted in her seat, “there are some who believe Cobb’s goddess is the Daughter but they are few in number. 

“The Lonely God released the first Sigh and declared the war over. Cline watched the Sigh rise into the tip of the Daughter’s temple and rejoiced at the thought of peace. Before he could lower his gun and join his hath brethren Cobb drew his own and shot at the Lonely God.” River gasped appropriately. 

“Cline thought all was lost but saw that his Daughter saved the Lonely God. She placed herself in the path of Cobb’s bullet. The final death in Messaline’s founding war, on the morning of the Seventh Day the Daughter died.”

“How did the Lonely God take her death?” River asked with bated breath. Her only experience was with the Doctor of Amy and Rory. The man who detested war but was not above violence himself. Her parent’s Doctor would not kill Cobb, but would manipulate his life into misery and self destruction.

“Cline and two of his new pacifists forced Cobb to his knees and held him there, the Lonely God took a weapon from one of the new hath pacifists and pressed it into Cobb’s head. He held it there and forced Cobb to see into his soul, looking into the divine is not good for you, you know?” River nodded, “Then, he declared “I never would.” and passed the gun to one of the pacifists, “When you build this city, when you leave these tunnels and enter the light, build a society that never would.” he said.”

“He returned to his Daughter’s side and asked his Black Priest if she would recover. The Black Priest sadly told him that his Daughter was not enough like him to recover from the fatal wound. “Too much like me,” the god countered. 

“Cline and Gazebo requested to preform funerary rights for the Daughter as a first step in their pacifistic future. The Lonely God granted them this right and disappeared with his priests.” The priest settled again, “the decedents of Cline and Gazebo still preform all funerary rights on Messaline.”

“So she died?”

“Yes, for a time.” The Priest smiled at River’s confusion, “The Daughter died. She lay still and cold and without breath for the rest of the Seventh Day. But as the sun rose on Messaline on the Eighth Day she sighed, her breath was golden and full of life. With it she opened her eyes, greeted Cline and Gazebo as old friends, and followed after her father to the stars determined to make him proud.” 

“And that golden light, that was the real sigh of the goddess?” River asked.

“Yes, child, it was the Sigh of Cobb’s story. It was the breath of the daughter goddess and not just the chemicals needed to terraform Messiline.” 

River asked more questions and took diligent notes but ultimately concluded that the Lonely God was not the Doctor. Pity really because the Lonely God sounded like a bit of a laugh – actually he sounded quite insufferable but in River’s opinion, those were often the most fun to play with. River was almost tempted to go back to 6012 and see for herself just what the Lonely God, his Daughter, and the Red and Black priests were but she promised her parents she wouldn’t time travel during school. She was trying to keep her promises. 

The rituals surrounding the Lonely God and his Daughter all dealt with learning and growing in pacifism. They developed green energy and medicine and sent aid to war-torn planets. The Black priests and acolytes developed battlefield medicine and prosthetics for those who agreed to give up on war. The Red priests and acolytes worked with record keeping and numbers they became engineers and archivists and other things they believed made someone a ‘temp’. 

Though the Messalines refused to fight, they were not push-overs. They were Men and Women that Never Would but their strong moral centres included protection of vulnerable and mediation between warring factions. 

River didn’t know if the Lonely God and his Daughter was a story made up by Cline to explain the end of the war, or if they were gods, or powerful aliens who messed with Messaline’s settlement for fun or by mistake but she didn’t particularly care either way. Once she concluded that he wasn’t the Doctor, her interest in the little colony dried up. 

She would continue her research elsewhere.

* * *

“Hi!” the blond woman that plunked down across from River beamed like a star out of the black at her, “I’m Jenny, I’m going to be a doctor!”


	2. Chen-7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An outbreak of Chen-7 in the system means River is quarantined into the Deduce Reading Room of Lunar University with the only other student with a binary vascular system.

“River, Jenny,” Dr. Arthur Candy called the two women back. They were in different degrees - Archaeology for River, trauma medicine for Jenny - and didn’t have many classes in common but Lunar University insisted all students take three years of ethics classes along with their degrees (River didn’t really see the point) and both had Candy this term. 

“Yes sir?” Jenny asked. She was always sunny and annoyingly chipper for such an early class. Still there was something hanging around the edges of her behaviour. Only creeping into focus when she addressed a superior ‘sir’ this and ‘ma’am’ that. Jenny had a military background. 

“There has been an outbreak of Chen-7 in the galaxy. The two of you our only students with binary vascular systems. The dean wants to ensure your safety so you are being confined to the Deduce Reading Room until we get an all clear from the health authorities.” 

“What’s Chen-7?” River asked tightly, she didn’t much enjoy the thought of being confined to the DRR for an indefinite amount of time. Let alone being confined to the DRR with some strange medical student that decided River was interesting a year ago. If it were just River she might have had the chance to slip away through the time stream and spend time with her parents. Or just jump ahead until the plague was no longer a factor.   


“Chen-7 is a deadly plague that kills over 80% of two-hearted races. Including both of yours.” Candy nodded to the both of them. Binary vascular races weren’t exactly common but there were enough of them out there that River had never really bothered to hide the fact that she had two hearts. Candy even knew enough of her history (somehow. River hadn’t told him) to keep her wonky genetics out of the university’s medical record system. She wondered if Jenny was the same or if she was just some Apalapucian unlucky enough to have River as an ethics classmate. 

“Can we pack a bag?” Jenny asked. River thought she hated the good little soldier for her compliance. River didn’t want anything to do with quarantine in the DRR. 

“Best not to. Chen-7 doesn’t badly effect people with mono vascular systems but we can be carriers. Its part of why the Deduce Reading Room was chosen.” he gestured through the open door to the entrance to the DRR just across the hall from their seminar. With a sigh River pulled herself to her feet, grabbed her book bag and data pad and led the other two across the hall. Her life, for the foreseeable future was confined to the DRR. How bothersome. 

“Neither of you filled out an emergency contact form when you registered. Is there anyone the university can contact for you?”

“No, just me.” Jenny grinned as brightly as usual, “If it gets really bad, send me back to Messaline please.”

“No, Dr. Candy. If I need to I’ll contact my parents.” River tapped her wrist where her vortex manipulator hid under her shirtsleeve. The professor believed it was just a two-way communication device. 

“All right then, I’ll let the two of you get settled in. We converted two of the study rooms into bed chambers and a third into a small dining area.” The DRR already had dedicated toilets, River hoped the university medical team thought to put in showers at the least, “If you need anything I’m on code 9, and the medics are code 1,” He gestured to the wall mounted coms unit, “Try to keep up with your studies.”

The hiss of an air lock followed Dr. Candy’s departure.  Jenny looked around excited by the prospect of exploring their prison. She was a medical student and had no reason to spend time in one of the Anthropology libraries. River had only spent a few study hours in the DRR herself. But it wasn’t all that much to write home about. One large room, where they were, held two data-banks, three long study tables with four chairs each and the walls were lined with books in various languages. Though mostly in the Lingua Franca of Lunar University. Two of the tables had been pushed off to one side and stacked to create a strange, wide shelf unit that held blankets, sets of clothes (River recognized two of her dresses from one pile, the medical units must have raided their dormitories, how violating.), toiletries, a pile of vid disks, and more. There were seven doors along the edges, two toilets (one with a shower symbol taped to the outside), and five study rooms (One with the campus symbol for food taped to the door). They would have to explore the other four to find their bedrooms. 

R iver left Jenny to her exploration choosing instead to throw herself onto one of the comfy armchairs tucked into the corner away from the entrance. She scrubbed at her face in annoyance angry at the appalling idea that she would die at the hands of anything as mundane as an illness. And when she was so close to becoming a doctor in her own right. River was looking forward to the day of her graduation. After that, she could use her manipulator to accelerate her doctoral studies and finally introduce herself to the world as Dr. Song. Or Dr. Pond. She wasn’t too fused about it right now. 

And now, after all this time, three human lifetimes worth of time, she might die because she had two  hearts.

* * *

She didn’t really have two hearts. 

Not the same way that a true binary vascular race had two hearts. 

River’s second heart was less than 50% the size of an average human heart. Her main heart 75% the size or there abouts. More than enough working heart to keep her healthy but not enough to make her look anything but unnatural to medical scanners. 

She wondered if that made her more or less vulnerable to Chen-7.

* * *

“This is nice.” Jenny smiled at River over their dinner. River had made it in the little study room come kitchenette. They’d been locked in there for a week now and River grew ever more tempted to use her manipulator or just kill Jenny. She was far too chipper. 

“Why are you taking this so well?” River asked around a bite of something akin to the macaroni and cheese she ate in the 1960s. It was remarkable how much cheese could change in 32 centuries. Distressing even.

Jenny shrugged around a mouthful of cheesy goo and swallowed, “The day I was born my father, his friend and I were locked up. I’ve spent a lot of time alone on a ship travelling from one system to another. I can entertain myself.” she tapped her head as if to say she could imagine herself up anything she wanted to see or experience, “Take your pick.” 

“Wait, you told Arthur you were from Messaline. I’ve been to Messaline, they don’t have any jails there.” River’s suspicions rose at Jenny’s confused look.

“Who’s Arthur? I don’t know anyone named Arthur.” She blinked, “Is it still a popular name?”

“Arthur Candy.” River growled, “And the people on Messaline only have one heart – hath or human.

“Why were you on Messaline, River?” Jenny asked ignoring or not seeing the only lightly veiled anger on her dinner-mates face, “When I was last there, it wasn’t really much to see. All black earth and toxic water and fighting.” She shrugged, “I don’t much plan to go back but its still where I’m from, you know?”

“I don’t actually.” River shrugged her anger simmering down. From her study visit she knew Messaline used to have an environment much like the one Jenny described, “Know, that is. The place I was born was, well lets just say it wasn’t a good place. I’d rather be anywhere but there again.”

* * *

“Jenny,” River asked one day, “Why do you have two hearts?” She had tried subtle prying, gentle goading, cajoling, and prodding to find an answer to that question in the two weeks since that macaroni and cheese meal. Jenny was either very good at side-stepping questions about her past or very oblivious to River’s efforts. River finally gave up and decided the direct route was worth a shot.

“I’m a, what did he call me, I’m a genetic anomaly of the machine. Messalines, at least last time I was home, Messalines were born with a Progenation machine splitting the DNA of a single parent into two. Not quite birth, not quite cloning, though there is some potential for genetic memory when I was born they were using machine memory instead.” Jenny smiled but it wasn’t her normal, chipper grin, “What about you, why do you have two hearts?”

“I guess I’m a genetic anomaly as well.” River tried not to think of herself that way but it was apropos, “both my parents are mono vascular but here I am.” 

“Cool.” Jenny nodded, “Can you give me a hand with this? You always get these strange assignments from professor Candy way better than I do.” She passed her data pad to River to look over. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No idea if this will become a thing. At the moment it is a 2 shot and nothing more.   
> A note: River goes to Lunar University in the 52nd century. But I have no idea how that connects with the New Byzantine Calendar from the Doctor's Daughter so now, 5200CE is the same as 6000NBC for plot reasons.


End file.
